Mayor gives qualified support of Quinn's plan for 'pork'

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said City Council discretionary funds spent on mall allocations to community groups should be under the purview of the Council, but larger earmarks should have administrative oversight by a mayoral agency.

The mayor this afternoon offered his deepest insights to date on the 'pork' process in the wake of the investigation into Council budget practices and yesterday's indictment of two Council aides.

"The reality is the large organizations that get large sums of money for the city, they do go through all of the appropriate processes," he said.

"We have 1,000 different grants from the City Council that are under $10,000 a piece. The cost of doing extensive research on that would dwarf the amount of money we give away," he went on to say.

"And so I think that there has to be two different levels here: For larger things, I couldn't agree more, it should be a competitive process. ... When it gets down to the very small grants, I think in all fairness to the City Council, there probably should be an ability for them to take care of the local, small things and to go through a more rigorous, extensive process would in all fairness probably keep that from happening," he concluded.

Ms. Quinn's office issued a statement earlier this week indicating she is still working on her proposed reforms.

"We are confident there is a way to meet both the goals that were laid out on Friday and the concerns that have been raised," the statement read.